The remaining part of this week's qualifier rounds will be held on the 28th from 7-11pm EST. The second qualifier round will take place on Febuary 3rd/4th 7-11pm EST. The Tournament itself will take place on February 17th / 18th /19th. You can watch the stream of all of them here.

Dragon Soul Difficulty Changes
Don't forget that the previously mentioned Dragon Soul changes are supposed to be going live next week, so this will likely be your last chance to complete the encounter before everyone has access to the 5% buff.

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

During the scheduled server maintenance on the week of January 31, the Dragon Soul raid will become enveloped by the “Power of the Aspects” spell, reducing the health and damage dealt of all enemies in the raid by 5%. This spell will grow progressively stronger over time to reduce the difficulty and make the encounters more accessible. The spell will affect both normal and Heroic difficulties, but it will not affect the Looking for Raid difficulty.

The spell can also be disabled by talking to Lord Afrasastrasz at the beginning of Dragon Soul, if a raid wishes to attempt the encounters without the aid of the Dragon Aspects.

For those of you who raided in Firelands and/or Icecrown you’re no doubt aware that as time goes on we want to keep people progressing by adjusting the difficulty. For any number of reasons a group may be having difficulty on a specific encounter each week, and our intent in adjusting the content is to ensure the ability to keep progressing, enjoying the content, and gearing up. With Icecrown we progressively buffed the players, and while this slow progression (and ability to opt-out of the buff) were both beneficial, it led to an expectation of your characters power, and once you left the raid you could certainly feel less effective. For Firelands we attempted to fix that by nerfing the content instead of buffing players, but we nerfed the content difficulty all at one time, which was counterproductive for players who really didn’t need as severe a change as we made. With Dragon Soul we’re attempting to do the best of both by having a progressive nerf to the content, keeping player power constant while providing small increases in assistance over a long period of time, as well as allowing players to opt-out of the assistance by speaking to Lord Afrasastrasz.

We hope you continue to enjoy Dragon Soul, and that these changes encourage you to attempt a higher difficulty, or just keep pushing to down that next boss.

Mists of Pandaria PvP

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

One of our upcoming goals in Mists of Pandaria is to make the gap between the overall DPS/healing of both PvE and PvP items smaller. In fact, we have design plans for new PvP combat mechanics that will make PvP gear and weapons markedly better in PvP than equivalent level PvE gear and weapons.

The overall goal is to reduce the barrier for crossing between PvE and PvP (and vice versa), as well as to also ensure that PvP gear is the best in PvP, and PvE gear is the best in PvE. More details on these upcoming changes will be posted as they become available.

Regardless of anyone’s rankings past or present, the process of learning and striving to improve never stops: it helps even the most battle-hardened gladiator remain able to go toe-to-toe with their fiercest opponents.

In team-based combat such as Arenas, pressuring an enemy in order to go for a kill or striving to protect your comrade from being the brunt of a focused assault are part of the experience, no matter what classes are driving to get the job done. Most matches are an incredibly complicated dance between combatants: a push and pull of offensive and defensive tactics, of coordinating switches, interrupts, dispels, crowd control, and of learning when to use your particular cooldowns or abilities, and when to change your tactics on the fly. Depending on who you ask, what class they are, what brackets they are in, and what team compositions they run, you are likely to get a totally different answer as to what particular class gives them the most trouble at any given time.

As far as the current balance of various classes: it’s something we are, as always, keeping a close watch on. We welcome you to post constructively about your observations in the appropriate threads, and the more focused and on-topic you can keep it, the better.

While it's not possible to address every individual thread or concern of the community, rest assured we are listening, regardless if you see us post within a particular thread or not.

"The overall goal is to reduce the barrier for crossing between PvE and PvP (and vice versa), as well as to also ensure that PvP gear is the best in PvP, and PvE gear is the best in PvE. More details on these upcoming changes will be posted as they become available" O LAWD MY PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ASNSWAD

IMO it doesnt matter what game "copied" the other. in fact, everytime i see someone saying "game X copied game Y" its just a fanboy of game Y.
back to topic, im curious to how they will pull it off on "new PvP combat mechanics that will make PvP gear and weapons markedly better in PvP than equivalent level PvE gear and weapons". i get the feeling that some PvE trinkets and weapons will still remain BiS for PvP.

I see removing the gap between pve and pvp a big mistake. They're already giving baseline resilience. I know personally I love blowing up noobs who have no gear. Its part of the learning curve. If you don't ha e that what the hell are the new guys striving for? To be only SLIGHTLY better? Cmon now. Blizzard is removing everything that takes a bit of work and rewards you with a feeling of accomplishment. They already gave every class a mortal strike and a self heal. What the hell are they doing. They're going to end up with o e big lame bg with everyone hitting like they're weilding nerf bats.If you hit everyone for 20k, that's alright. But when you hit that one guy for 50k, that's awesome. This is BS. Stop trying to reinvent the bicycle.

Ideas are ideas, what does it matter where they come from as long as they're good and/or they work?

The only possible way such an idea (blatant rip?) could go south for Blizzard is if they name it the exact same thing -- Expertise. But I really doubt that will happen, as I think it would leave more than a few players scratching their heads for a bit (for obvious reasons, I hope), and that's, generally, not Blizzard's MO.

As for Bioware's implementation, Expertise is no different than Resilience, except in that it buffs damage done to other players in addition to the reduction in damage received from other players. Its effects seem kind of contradictory when you read them out loud ("so, it increases the damage I do to another player, but if they have an equal amount of Expertise, my damage is reduced by the same amount that it was just increased? o.O And I just went through that whole gear grind for a stat that, at the end, results in a zero sum for everyone involved? /boggle"), but, hey, it is what it is. I guess the same could be said about Resilience too, now that I think about it... heh

Don't misunderstand though; I may think systems like Expertise and Resilience are taking the easy road on design, but they are -- in a game that's so gear-centric (unlike Guild Wars) -- the easiest ways to possibly control balance in PvP without affecting PvE.
Especially if you throw the two stats into one game: if "Expertise" only affects output, and Resilience is a base+ stat that only affects input... you can tweak the values of "Expertise" on a class's gear if they're doing too much/too little damage in PvP (or Resilience if there are survivability concerns), and since that gear is practically required for PvP and worthless in PvE (meaning everyone will be wearing it)... Bam. There's that easy nob that you can turn to tweak PvP balance.

Maybe I'm burning out, but all these things sound bad to me: 1. I could not care less about eSport arena matches. The last eSport I cared about was Starsiege Tribes (which was awesome). 2. 5% buff, meh. 3. I'm actively uninterested in world PVP, don't really like the idea of "No matter how good your PVE gear is you're always going to get wtfpwned even worse than now by the " insert worst expletive you know here "ing gankers. I hope I'm the only one.

So what? people have been ripping off the first wheal[sic] for years! not one complain about that no!

That's what you think.

Somewhere in a dark corner of Ancient Poland sits the skeleton of what once was a great inventor, eternally-complaining, wondering what anyone ever saw in that simple-minded circular wheel. Pfft... kids toys...

Especially when he knew his Cubed Wheel (Cubic Wheel? Wheel Squared? Marketing was not his forte.) would have revolutionized the world!!
( <--- see Avatar for extra emotion, lol)

My, it would have been so revolutionary, the trade industry alone would have come to a screeching halt overnight!!

But yeah, it's just the way the art world works (and games are a form of art). One artist sees what another has done, likes it, and incorporates bits (or even the whole thing, sometimes) into his next piece, and then the process continues with another artist (or maybe it doesn't).

IMO it doesnt matter what game "copied" the other. in fact, everytime i see someone saying "game X copied game Y" its just a fanboy of game Y.
back to topic, im curious to how they will pull it off on "new PvP combat mechanics that will make PvP gear and weapons markedly better in PvP than equivalent level PvE gear and weapons". i get the feeling that some PvE trinkets and weapons will still remain BiS for PvP.

Complaining about WoW copying from TOR is like Dane Cook complaining about people copying "his" jokes.

how can you esport arena matches? there is no spectator mode. ofc the second option is to do those pvp battles somewhere in the world, but thats probably even worse idea.. also, what does the audience get from that? you cant watch it live, you cant even analyse whats going on later because there is so much stuff going at same time. this idea is awkward.

RIP Teh Gladiators. Looks like they're transitioning to a new story. As Thundersnow (the author) stated they did lose wind around Cataclysm. The story should have ended after they got their gladiator drakes.

One of our upcoming goals in Mists of Pandaria is to make the gap between the overall DPS/healing of both PvE and PvP items smaller. In fact, we have design plans for new PvP combat mechanics that will make PvP gear and weapons markedly better in PvP than equivalent level PvE gear and weapons. The overall goal is to reduce the barrier for crossing between PvE and PvP (and vice versa), as well as to also ensure that PvP gear is the best in PvP, and PvE gear is the best in PvE. More details on these upcoming changes will be posted as they become available.

Is it just me or is that statement completely contradictory, how can they make the gap smaller but make both sets of gear optimal for their own area. Imo they need to make remove the ilevel from pvp gear and just call it the name of the season. That way we get less scrubs in pvp gear with no gems or enchants using the high ilevel to get into heroics and raid finder. The other way round maybe doing rated bgs or arena should require a resilance level or amount of pvp gear.

The first two lines did seem contradictory to me when I first read it too. Making the gap smaller, but then "in fact" the PVP items will be markedly better. I think Vaeflare made a boo-boo in writing it. =p

Blizzard always over complicate things. PVE gear should have no place AT ALL in PVP. If they want to make concessions, then they need to make it 2-way and let PVP gear be viable for raiding. I dont care how many times someone dies while gearing up, its part of the process and it gives you experience learning how to use your character.